On July 25th, VRChat announced there will be a security update going live in the next few days. One of the major changes is the implementation of Easy Anti Cheat (EAC) into VRChat to prevent “maliciously modified clients from attacking and harassing other users”. The player community blew up in no time and instantly review bombed the game.
VRChat is an online virtual world platform operated by VRChat, Inc. The platform allows users to interact with others with user-created 3D avatars and worlds.
According to the VRChat group, the EAC will block any modified clients and they provide no whitelists for any kind of mods since “Modification of the client – in any way – has, and will certainly continue to be, a violation of the Terms of Service.” And they believe “all modified clients – even ones that aren’t malicious – are a burden for creators.”
A screenshot taken from the official blog of VRChat shows the reason for the team to bring EAC.
The announcement makes many players frustrated with the update since mods played an important role in VRChat. Twitter user @ProxyFox45 pointed out that multiple mods helped disabled players enjoy VRChat while it lacks proper accessibility features. Others criticized EAC did not stop cheaters effectively in other games and will not in VRChat, but it will only decrease the game stability. They also indicated that there are mods that helped to improve the experience of VRChat by fixing crashes or increasing the framerate while the developer team failed to do so.
I’ve noticed that you all haven’t addressed this, are you going to implement accessibility features before adding EAC or do disabled players just have to go away? https://t.co/i3UXPx0VDm
— ProxyFox 🦇🌘 💛🤍💜🖤🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ (@ProxyFox45) July 26, 2022
On July 26th, the VRChat team provided an update of their announcement, confirming that they had listened to the feedback of its community but they did not “have plans or intent to revert or roll it back”. Soon after, the game got 6709 negative reviews from angry players on the same day, and the recent review rate dropped from Mostly Positive (79% positive) to Mostly Negative (20% positive).
A screenshot of the review graph on Steam shows VRChat got a review bomb in the last 3 days.
Source: VRChat